A New Design for Sharing and Reblogging

Interaction is integral to the blogging experience. We’ve just redesigned sharing and reblogging on WordPress.com to make joining the conversation even easier.

Feb 10, 2014 @ 4:55 pm

Joen A.

Today, we’re launching a refreshed sharing and reblogging experience. We’re bringing both visual and functional improvements to how reblogging, sharing, and liking posts on WordPress.com works. Let’s take a look at some of the changes we’ve introduced.

Reblogs

We’ve redesigned reblogged posts for clearer attribution and more intelligent excerpting. If the reblogged post contains pictures, those images now really shine — even in the reblog.

To accompany the new reblog design, we also crafted a brand new Reblog button to show next to the Like button, and both have a fresh, clean look:

Sharing

Speaking of new buttons, we also overhauled your blog’s social sharing buttons:

With a more subdued, streamlined feel, these buttons lend your posts’ footer an airier, lighter look. They now also share the same visual style as the Like and Reblog buttons.

We replaced the previously-used graphics with an icon font — which means the new icons look great on any screen, regardless of resolution, even when you zoom in. In fact, if you have the Custom Design upgrade, it’s now easier than ever to customize these buttons further. Changing the color of an icon font is as simple as one line of CSS.

If you miss the colors, we made an extra-colorful option for you, but still kept things simple:

To select this gorgeous, round version, pick the “Icon only” option from your dashboard, by going to Settings → Sharing.

We really hope you enjoy these improvements!

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Just reblogged a friend’s post and it’s not showing on my blog’s home page or being shared on my facebook either. Wondering about this. I CAN see it when I click through “All posts” on my Dashboard. Any insights??

I love it that you are constantly developing! But it’s a shame that one can’t have also the icon-only sharing buttons in the new grey colour. I don’t like to use the text or icon-text sharing buttons because they take up too much space. I always had icons-only, but now they look a bit too large, bright and striking. Just one person’s opinion…

Pompous opinion: Reblogging should not be allowed on WP.com, and the new social buttons are not good. Instead of this nonsense, the ability to remove unwanted “for profit” followers that skew your actual follower number, and the ability to remove disingenuous “Likes” would actually be useful.

I just tested all the available options. I am not finding any to my liking. The previous small/square icons were most appropriate for my blog. Now the big round ones are over empowering the font size, space and the style of the blog. I am now hoping that you would bring back the small sized square icons for those who may not prefer to have round icons. Please.

Very nice! You know what might make it better? A way to reblog on a schedule, like “reblog at 4pm tomorrow”. Or a queue of some sort. That way as I go through my feed and find things I like, I could reblog several things at once, but not spam my own followers or have things get lost in the shuffle.

I’d very much love the option to block “profit” followers too. And perhaps people who indiscriminately like ALL your posts. I’m not sure if it’s even people or some spambots. Maybe some food for thought for future?

I feel obliged to add that even if I may not be happy with absolutely all about WordPress, I’m still extremely happy with the platform on the whole.

To shoreacres and Joen A: I apologize for expressing my question so badly. I was not asking for the ability to edit the original post content being reblogged. What I meant was the ability to save, as a draft, the portion of the reblog that contains my introductory comments. I believe it used to work like that in the past. I agree the reblogger should never have the ability to edit the original post.

Also, at least on my blog using the Greyzed theme, the reblog is visually glitchy.

I had an intuition that WordPress people must be working on the “Reblogging” option. And what a pleasant surprise! This is really good.
A couple of questions:
Can I pre-select my category while re-blogging? Will I be able to select how many words / pictures I want to appear in my reblogged post?http://zttrr.wordpress.com/

I like the design, but I wish the like button were a little larger. With the colorful icon buttons, “like” kind of gets lost, especially since the font below it (that says how many people have liked the post) seems to have gotten smaller.

@Joen A
Thanks so much for the ability to nix the ability to reblog posts. Now what we need is a high powered education campaign for those, who rely on reblogging as a substitute for publishing original content. It seems many need to learn how to actually blog properly by creating their own unique posts and posting only a brief (75 consecutive words or fewer) properly attributed quote backlinked to the original post, rather than using that reblog button at all.

I see we can turn off the new Reblog button next to the Like button, and it looks like it also turns off the Reblog button in my Admin bar. But does this prevent others from reblogging my material, or, as I suspect, is it just hiding the button from me? I’m very much opposed to the Reblog function and am not happy that you are making my images even better looking on someone else’s blog. People should have to come to my blog to see my material.

So long as copy/paste exists, it’s impossible to prevent users from copying text.

A reblog is not a republished post, it’s an excerpt with loads of attribution and links to the original post, including a signal to search engines not to count it as belonging to anyone but the original author.

In response to John with the “pompous opinion”… I certainly understand where you’re coming from. I, personally, will never ever ever reblog anything. I’ll cite a portion— not a lot, not all— and give credit. That’s about it ’cause I my blogs are my body of work and as authentic as possible. But some folks do like to reblog.

I’m reminded of Newton’s theory on “equal and opposite reactions” as well as Khalil Gibran’s philosophy.

The blogging world has lots of diversified thinking, eh? And so we learn to give and take… and aspire for a happy medium.

The grey option is a gift for those looking for a subtle option for their blogs. And congratulations on keeping us informed about any changes you apply. One more testament of the “ideology” of WordPress team!

Really like the new style of the buttons! I would love to use the Pinterest button too, but it is invisible in Settings > sharing on my desktop computer, it is visible on my tablet but there I can’t drag the button to Enabled Services. Can you help?

Just happened to drop by and immediately disabled the new reblog button manually on my 16 blogs.😦 I suggest as a default setting new buttons or features should be turned off and anyone who wants them on they blog can then enable them.

This should be an option, not something automatic. Not really fair to those of us who liked the old version. Besides, it is something on our websites. It is one thing to have an update for WordPress or editing, but something that appears on our site? No. That’s absolutely wrong.

@Joen A
I am astonished to find out that after being disabled the reblog button still appears in the Reader. Why is that? Only those who are logged in could use the reblog button in the first place, so why are we being provided with this phony baloney disabling reblogging option that’s ineffectual? I don’t get it. Please explain.

I started a Forum topic on re-blogging and feel very strongly that WordPress should make it an option, giving the author creative control. I suggest adding an “Allow Re-blog” box next to the “Allow Comments” and “Allow Pings” under the Quick Edit.

Is this update not yet working with all themes? The sharing buttons don’t seem to be functioning on my blog (Chateau theme). I can no longer see sharin/like buttons on my posts/pages, nor enable them on the dashboard: http://slywit.wordpress.com/about-2/technology-issues/